The U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) user facility is the fastest network dedicated to science. This multi-100Gbps fiber optic backbone stretches across the country and beyond, interconnecting the DOE’s national laboratory system and experimental facilities with research and commercial networks around the globe.

This high-speed interconnectivity enables tens of thousands of scientists to access data portals, transfer vast research data streams, and tap into remote instruments and sources — all in real time.

Studying specific weather-related phenomena, including the behavior of devastating storms that impact specific regions, requires access to high-quality datasets from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. ESnet facilitates these data transfers for researchers across the DOE national laboratory complex.

But the scientific community is facing a growing challenge: dramatically increasing data volumes.

Telescopes are scanning the universe with greater precision.

Supercomputers are simulating scientific phenomena at higher resolutions. Sensors and detectors are gathering experimental results with greater sensitivity and speed.

ESnet helps scientists manage, analyze, and exchange large data sets generated by supercomputers, large-scale research collaborations, and experimental facilities, such as the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument being installed at the Mayall Telescope in Arizona.

ESnet’s next-generation network, ESnet6, is designed to help the DOE research community navigate this “data deluge” by giving them more bandwidth, greater flexibility, and faster data transfer capabilities.

With a projected early finish in 2023, ESnet6 will feature an entirely new software-driven network design that enhances the ability to rapidly invent, test, and deploy new innovations. The design includes

ESnet is working with the General Medical Sciences and Cancer Institutes Structural Biology Facility at the Advanced Photon Source (APS, pictured) to streamline and improve data movement activities for users of the APS beamlines.

100–400Gbps optical channels, with up to eight times the potential capacity compared to ESnet5

Services that monitor and measure the network 24/7/365 to ensure it is operating at peak performance, and

Advanced cybersecurity capabilities to protect the network, assist its connected sites, and defend its devices in the event of a cyberattack.

ESnet6 represents a transformational change in network capacity, resiliency, and flexibility that will bring tangible benefits to the DOE mission, including exascale. As the top science data network in the world, ESnet will continue supporting effective collaborations and consistent access to data, computing, and experiments, thus contributing significantly to U.S. competitiveness.

Current Project Status (as of December 2018)

ESnet6 is being managed as a DOE 413.3B process and has achieved CD 1/3A. The 3A long-lead procurements are underway, and the team is preparing for the final design review, in addition to finalizing the cost, schedule, and scope in preparation for CD 2/3 in late 2019.

Enabling Scientific Data Analytics Breakthroughs

Bio-scientists from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are shedding new light on the process of photosynthesis, using an emerging model of science discovery that combines powerful laser instruments, supercomputers and networks.

“Photosystem II” (PSII), a protein complex found in green plants, algae and cyanobacteria, is the only known biological system that can harness sunlight to oxidize water, which produces oxygen. Berkeley Lab researchers are using new and powerful X-ray free electron lasers at SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source to investigate exactly how PSII “splits” a water molecule to create oxygen. XFELs takes very high-resolution photos of the reaction as it is occurring, capturing 30-120 images per second, which produces roughly 60-100 Gigabytes of data every five minutes.

Leveraging a high-speed connection to ESnet, scientists send these massive datasets - as they are captured - to the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center in just under a minute. And in near real time, NERSC’s supercomputers analyze the data and send the results back via ESnet. Scientists can know immediately if they’re gathering meaningful results from their experiment while the experiment is happening. In a study published in Nature in November 2018, Berkeley Lab researchers reported that, using this model, they had captured the most complete and highest resolution picture of PSII to date.

The integration of experimental, networking and computational facilities is enabling researchers to take a giant leap forward in understanding a three billion-year-old biological system. And in doing so, scientists are on the path to discovering how to create “artificial” photosynthesis that will provide the planet with an abundant source of clean, green and renewable energy.